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Western Digital ships enterprise SAS-based 3D NAND SSDs

From : TechTarget

Western Digital Corp. is out with its first 3D NAND SAS solid-state drive.

Western Digital this week said its 12 Gbps Ultrastar SS300 is shipping to OEM partners who will sell the drives in enterprise storage arrays and servers. The Ultrastar SS300 comes from Western Digital's HGST division and was developed with partner Intel. The SSD is aimed at virtualized systems, high-performance databases, analytics, video production, and private and hybrid cloud deployments.

Western Digital joined Samsung as the only SSD vendors to ship SAS SSDs based on 3D NAND flash, according to Greg Wong, founder and principal analyst at Forward Insights in North York, Ont. He said 3D NAND enables higher capacity and better performance, especially for writes, over 2D NAND.

Wong noted that Intel, Micron and Samsung currently sell SATA-based 3D NAND SSDs. At 6 Gbps, SATA is a slower drive interface than SAS, although SATA drives often have a cost-per-gigabyte advantage over SAS drives. The 12 Gbps SAS Ultrastar SS300 can negotiate down to 6 Gbps if the host requires the lower speed.